"What's that noise?" called Adam from down below.
"Truck comin'," Dan hollered back. "We got company."
"Get outta there, hide I can deal with it!"
Dan paused for a moment looking over his shoulder at the approaching vehicle. "Fine, be careful."
Dan ran off and Adam looked back down at the large chest at his feet. The hole he was in was a good ten feet down and about 3 feet wide. The rope that was tied off up top hung loosely against the dirt walls. Adam was thinking fast. The chest was locked tight. The only way to get that thing open without the key would be some heavy explosives. Of course they most likely had those. Adam picked up his shovel he had set on the ground and began to continue his digging to the side. He had made a small alcove so far but it wouldn't do good to try and hide in it. From the right angle he'd be seen. Hopefully they would assume it was an empty hole, if only he could hide away deep enough.. So he kept digging. Then the earth gave way. The little alcove crumbled to reveal a small tunnel beyond. Adam stared in surprise for a moment but was brought back from shock by the sound of a truck coming to a halt and parking above. Car doors opened and slammed and heavy footsteps could be heard approaching. He didn't have a choice. Adam heaved the chest up and stepped into the tunnel. As he did so the ground began to shake and dirt and pebbles began to fall all around. Adam dove inside just as the entire hole collapsed in on itself.
Adam coughed and sputtered, spitting out dirt and trying to clear his lungs of dust. It was pitch black inside. The opening to the tunnel had been sealed up with who knows how much dirt. How had the hole even collapsed like that? In any matter he was safe from the assailants for a little while. At least until they dug him out. But he wasn't going to wait for that. Adam felt around his pockets for his lighter. He found it and pulled it out and flicked it a couples times until the flame sparked to life and illuminated the tunnel around him. It was a very tight tunnel. It was big enough for him to almost stand up straight, but not wide enough for him to carry the chest. He could drag it along behind him. He had no other choice but to leave it which wasn't really an option. He climbed over the chest and grabbed the handle on the side and lifted it to a tilt and began dragging it slowly along.
The tunnel was sloping slightly downwards going deeper into the earth. Adam closed the lighter wanting to save it for if he really needed it. For now the tunnel seemed to be endless and the same as the rest, so he kept moving forward, one hand dragging the chest behind him and the other slowly feeling around in front of him. He had been walking for what felt like a good hour before he decided to take a break. The air was thinner and he was starting to have a hard time breathing. He stopped and sat down on the chest and focused on slowing and calming his breathing. When he was steady he flicked the lighter back to life. The scenery had not changed; the walls were still bare dirt, stone, and the occasional root. He looked up at the ceiling of the tunnel, which seemed quite solid. He hoped it wouldn't cave in anymore, but with no support or anything it was a probable problem.
Suddenly Adam looked all around him. He had sworn he just heard someone whisper in his ear. It was very faint and quiet, but he knew he had heard it. Unless he was just hearing things. Maybe the lack of oxygen was getting to him. Yes, that had to be it. No air will do that to a guy after a while. He could start heading back but that would most likely mean giving up the chest. For all he knew they could have dug out the hole and be heading down the tunnel right now. And with that thought he closed the lighter and got to his feet and began dragging the chest along.
Another twenty minutes or so down Adam began to hear a low sort of humming noise. It seemed to be emanating from all around him with no discernible source or cause. What was it, and what could be causing it? The further down the tunnel he went the louder the humming noise got becoming more of a buzzing that drilled into his very brain. He suddenly noticed a change in his footing. He was now on solid rock rather than dirt. He flicked the lighter to life once more and shined it around him. He was now in a larger tunnel made of solid rock, some type of granite. But his stomach knotted up a bit as he read the writing scrawled across the walls, floor, and ceiling of the rock tunnel. One phrase, written over and over again, "Hell is always open for those that deserve." The writing was shaky and messy and looked like it had been written in a great hurry. Most likely the doings of a mad man, who else would do such a nutty thing? Or maybe some kids. This tunnel probably lead into one of the old mines around and had another way in and out. Kids always liked to come into the old mines and tag them, desecrate them, throw wild parties. Damn kids. It was just some kids. But there still seemed to be no end in sight, even in this larger tunnel. So Adam closed the lighter and once again began trekking along dragging the chest behind him. This was actually a good thing. Once he got into the main part of the mine he could probably find a way out, and that meant freedom. Hopefully Dan got away too, and then they would meet up and could get back on track. The plan was still the same, just a detour is all.
As he continued on the humming and buzzing had now grown louder than ever and Adam could barely hear himself think. Then he noticed a light coming from up ahead. Must be the end. He kept moving forward until he found himself climbing through a small doorway into a large rectangular chamber. The ceiling of the chamber was very high, almost out of sight. How far down had he come? The light was coming from torches in metal brackets all along the walls. They seemed to have been freshly lit and were illuminating the whole chamber quite nicely. Then Adam noticed at the far end; a huge statue stood erect upon a pedestal that was in the middle of a pool. It was a large circular pool with water as black as the darkness he had just come from. The torches barely even seemed to reflect in it. It seemed to churn slightly, and Adam realized along with the humming noise there seemed to be fairly heavy air flow in the chamber, but where it was coming from he could not tell. It was warm air. He turned his attention back to the statue. It was quite bland. The pedestal seemed to be more ornately carved and decorated than the statue itself which seemed to be nothing more than a tall rounded blob. It reminded Adam of one of those ghost cartoon characters, where it was just a rounded head and the sheet covering the body. But there seemed to be no eyes or other features of any type. Adam decided to move forward. The chamber was made of the same granite rock that the last portion of the tunnel had been, only it was totally bare. No writing was scribbled around, there was nothing but empty space. Well empty except for the little pool surrounding that statue at the end.
As Adam approached closer to the statue he began to notice the carvings in it. Strange and alien hieroglyphics the likes he had never seen before. He was no archaeologist or anything, but he was sure that these symbols weren't in any kind of history or language books. They were so bizarre, twisted, and crude...almost like the same hand writing in the tunnel. He almost thought that maybe they were just scratches and gashes in the rock, but they were far to deliberate. The humming noise seemed even louder near the statue and Adam suddenly began to feel increasingly uneasy. Something felt very wrong about the whole thing. This room shouldn’t exist. It couldn’t exist. This was something out of a dream, maybe even a nightmare.
Then it stopped.
The room went completely quiet. Suddenly the torches all went out as if blow by a huge gust of wind, but Adam felt nothing. It was pitch black. He couldn’t see a thing and for some reason he dared not flick the lighter on. Something told him he should wait in the dark and not be seen. Then he heard it. The water in the pool sounded as if it were churning and trickling somewhere. It was slow and soft but definitely moving. Adam felt frozen with fear. He couldn’t move, nor did he want to. He could now feel wetness around his feet and realized the water, or whatever the liquid was, was moving around below him. From the sound of it it was moving past him towards the tunnel he had come through. After what felt like hours of standing in the dark, the liquid flowing steadily past him, the torches suddenly became lit again.
Adam could see the light return through his now shut eyes. He didn’t even remember shutting them, but as he opened them he felt at ease. He was still facing towards the pool and statue. The statue looked the same, though he could have sworn the carvings were glowing slightly white now. But apart from that the pool was still full of crystal clear water, showing the stone beneath. Adam’s heart skipped a beat and he felt his body become warm, cold, and shaky all at once. He turned slowly around to find himself face to face with a mass of blackness looming over him. A disembodied voice echoed around the chamber, “Hell is always open for those that deserve.”
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